When "functional" is not good enough: How usability can make you fly or make you die..

In the late 1990s, IBM introduced the IBM RealPhone - a software application that allowed users to make phone calls from their computers. The phone was called 'real' because.. well.. it just was. It looked real. It had a handset and a dial pad and a digital rectangular screen - everything you would expect on a 'real' phone. But did it feel real?

http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/phone.htm

At a first glance, the idea seemed to be groundbreaking, especially with IBM promoting the product with slogans like “Welcome to the future; one without distracting windows and menu bars”, “If you can use a telephone, you can use this software”, “Novice users can use it immediately” … etc. With all these big promises being advertised, it was very embarrassing for IBM to find out very shortly after releasing the product that their RealPhone ranked first in the Interface Hall of Shame. It was found to be “violating nearly every aspect of proper interface design.” It was a big failure for IBM because - as found later - there were absolutely no usability tests before the product was released.

In the older days of computing, usability had been completely overshadowed by functionality. People were impressed with what computers had to offer - so much so that they did not care if it took them twenty steps to accomplish a given task, or if they had to wait for hours to calculate a number, or if they had to punch sixteen long queries to do a simple search. All what mattered was that the computer was able to accomplish the task. Of course, let alone other important factors such as the immaturity of input and display technologies.

Not long after this initial period of fascination, the story of computers started to take a drastic turn. The personal computer started to take its place in almost every household. We had mouse devices, keyboards, and colored displays that pretty much started a revolution in graphical user interfaces. Software builders began to think about interfaces more critically and some - like Steve Jobs - more aesthetically. Functionality was no longer the only concern. People started to take usability more seriously. And as competition heated up between different software rivals, end-users got spoiled and very picky about the software they chose for document editing, graphics design, media playing ... etc. Rarely could any company get away with a poorly designed software just because it was functional. New domains started to emerge such as interaction design and usability testing. Gurus such as Jakob Nielsen outlined usability principles and design guidelines that proved to be very useful and practical for years to come.

We have to admit that we have come a long way from being in what I call the infant-fascination stage when we were wowed by the mere fact that computers could do something for us - just like when infants are fascinated by the mere fact that they have discovered their hands and feet. But we also need to recognize that, in this day and age, there are even more dramatic changes taking place at a very fast pace. With the advent of touch devices like the iPad and most smart phones, digital tabletops like Microsoft Surface, and the absolutely mind-blowing input technology such as Microsoft Kinect, we find ourselves puzzled by how the usability status-quo could possibly cope with these changes. Design principles that applied to mouse-based user interfaces cannot be applied as is to touch-based interfaces. A fingertip is probably thousands of times bigger than a mouse cursor or a stylus head. Windows, menus, scroll bars are only a few examples of all the things we need to revisit in order to build truly usable interfaces for orientation-agnostic devices such as digital tabletops.

The challenge of usability has always been there to stay. And especially nowadays, it seems to be where the competitive advantage is. If you build aesthetically pleasing devices (if you're building hardware at all), with intuitive user interactions and a simple interface, then your chances are undoubtedly higher at grabbing the lion's share of the market in any given domain. Apple's iPod is a prime example of that. Google's search engine is another example. Neither of these examples were the first-to-market in their domains. If anything, Google actually came very late to the market of search engines. The iPhone was not even the second- or the third-to-market in the domain of smart phones, but Apple still managed to sell a grand total of 100 million devices in a few years! I would actually go further to state that usability has now become a more important factor than functionality. Just think about the specs of the Apple's iPod compared to those of Microsoft's Zune. The latter was superior in many ways - but definitely not in aesthetics and usability. After generations of improved Zune devices, Microsoft could not get more than roughly 3% of the market compared to about 70% for Apple (50% of which were new customers - just to avoid going into the 'loyalty' argument). In 2011, Microsoft was finally courageous enough to put an end to the troubled journey of its Zune and pull the plug on the whole idea of competing with the iPod.
Now that we have established that usability does provide a business value (of course if you consider selling 100 million devices a business value), then we can talk about what it is you can do as a software practitioner or as a software company to not only build usable systems, but also promote a culture of looking at usability as a competitive advantage and even as a business niche.

Stay tuned for more posts on the "usability series"!